Archive for the ‘Ancient South America’ Category
By: The Scribe on November, 2007
It was around 4,000 years ago that an advanced civilization lived in the northern coastal desert of Peru, pre-dating the Inca and building massive, complex structures to their deities. Who were the people of this advanced civilization? Currently, the question of who they were remains unanswered – however, they left behind a large, colorful temple for future historians to admire.
The temple is massive, and was constructed in an unusual way for the people of ancient Peru – whoever built the temple created their own mud bricks to use for building the structure, instead of using carved stones or rocks as most Peruvian civilizations did. The ability to create mud bricks from local sediment is considered an advanced function of society – so whoever constructed this temple knew exactly what they were doing.
What the temple was used for isn’t too difficult to surmise – on the front of the building there was a staircase leading up to an altar. The kind of altar here, and the location of the altar on the building, point directly to its use for making offerings to deities and engaging in fire worship.
The fire temple had several of its walls painted as well, which makes these murals possibly the oldest wall paintings known in the Western Hemisphere. One of the red and white murals shows a deer being hunted and trapped in a net, which makes this fire temple a place of very different iconographic and architectural tradition than what was previously known to be the case in the area.
With a size of approximately 2,500 square meters – nearly half the size of a football field – the Peruvian fire temple is close to the modern city of Lima, about 755 kilometers away. Adding to the curiosity factor of the building is a skeleton of a monkey and a piece of turquoise, as well as the way which the dirt was burying the building – it appeared as though once the people finished using this building, they deliberately buried it! The monkey skeleton and turquoise, found near ritual areas of the temple, were probably ceremonial offerings to commemorate the building.
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Tomorrow: More Ancient Standard
By: The Scribe on November, 2007
An anthropology professor from Trent University recently put together a study on the diets of the Inca who lived in ancient Peruvian town. By studying the remains of 500-year-old Incan mummies, she was able to reconstruct what kinds of foods they ate, how much they consumed, and when the food was eaten.
A number of Incan mummies were uncovered at the coastal town of Tupac Amaru, in the midst of an ancient cemetery. Since this area of Peru is extremely dry throughout the entire year, the preservation conditions for organic materials is very good – many of the ancient mummies are so well preserved that parts such as skin, hair, eyelashes, and fingernails remain on the bodies. In some cases, tattoos have even survived the decomposition process and are still visible.
Tissue samples taken from the mummies – including pieces of hair, nail, skin, bone, muscle and tendon – were tested in order to obtain the chemical signatures that are left behind when human beings consume foods. Typically, a piece of bone will record the diet of an individual over the past fifteen years, due to its extremely slow growth rate. Also, since hair averages a growth rate of one centimeter per month, it can record an individual’s dietary habits during the weeks before death.
The study revealed that the Inca had rather extreme seasonal fluctuations in their diet: in the winter, the Inca ate mostly tubers, which includes items like potatoes, while in the summer their primary subsistence was on corn. For the mummies from this area of Peru, that was quite an odd find – historians have known that the Inca normally had an excellent ability to maintain a healthy stash of food stores and supply the food to their surrounding populations, but it appeared that the people here were relying heavily on cultivated foods in their diet.
That means that the Inca from this region were in a rather precarious position – for some reason or another, they weren’t getting access to stored food in any significant quantities from the centralized distribution of the Incan capital cities, and thus these people had no fallback plan for surviving crop failures. Also, the evidence gleaned from the mummies showed that most of the people died during the summer, which was contrary to typical thinking. Normally, ancient populations lost more people during the winter’s harsh conditions than in the summer – but for this group of Inca, the summer’s lack of dietary choices caused malnutrition and a susceptibility to disease.
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Tomorrow: More Ancient Standard
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
In the spring of 2007, archaeologists discovered a rare cache of gold artifacts inside of a Bolivian pyramid – not to mention a 1,300-year-old skeleton alongside it. Strangely untouched by looters, the skeleton and the gold were fully intact, and have revealed more information about the ancient Tiwanaku people who lived in the area between 400 and 1200 AD.
The skeleton is believed to have been an elite member of the Tiwanaku, possibly a priest or governmental figure, primarily because the bones at this burial – unlike some bones found elsewhere in the pyramid in past years – had no physical markings on them that would indicate the person was a victim of ritual sacrifice. In addition, the body was buried near the top of the pyramid instead of near the bottom, which was where other bones from sacrificial victims were previously found.
The pyramid in which the bones and gold were found was the Akapana pyramid, which was one of the largest pre-Columbian structures in South America. It was heavily looted long ago, which was why finding a burial with an inordinate amount of gold was such an unexpected discovery. The Bolivian archaeologists working here also found evidence of the individual having been buried with a llama by his side – apparently llamas were believed to assist someone in their transition to the afterlife.
A gold headband, a fist-sized gold pendant, and several gold figurines were part of the gold trove that was buried with the body. The figurines were very carefully crafted and had defined faces with correctly proportioned features – evidently, the culture was doing well enough at the time to bury their important people with an array of riches… however, a study done on the bones seems to indicate that he had suffered from malnutrition at some point during his life, and was approximately 25 years old at the time of death.
This was highly unusual – after all, if someone was of high status within the society, he should have been well cared for throughout his life, which means that he would have eaten well, regardless of whether or not it caused a common citizen to starve. This seems to point to a period of cultural stress wherein there was a resource shortage.
Why does that matter? Since the history of the Tiwanaku is still a bit unclear, knowing that they went through a period of decline and then potential resurgence helps to piece together their history – after all, if their decline was because of food shortages or war with other people, it should show up in the records of the surrounding cultures during the same time. This small bit of information then helps to piece together a full history of the whole of South America during pre-Columbian times.
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Tomorrow: Book covers… made of human skin! oooooh scary!
By: The Scribe on October, 2007
Although the popularly held belief is that Columbus discovered America… it seems that he wasn’t actually the first to make it there from across the ocean. That’s right – the chickens beat him to it.
Well, actually both the chickens and the Polynesians arrived at the same time, according to ancient DNA evidence. It turns out that the ancient Polynesians were much better sailors than anyone gave them credit for, and somehow managed to beat Christopher Columbus to the Americas by at least a century, arriving in the early 1400s, if not before.
So, not only did the Polynesians colonize nearly every island in the South Pacific – and there’s plenty of evidence for their existence on these islands – but they apparently figured that journeys of several thousand miles weren’t enough. They wanted to sail even further, which brought them to: South America.
Ancient chicken bones found along the coast of Chile were DNA analyzed and compared with the DNA of other chickens found at archaeological sites across the Polynesian islands. The results? The chickens’ genetic stock was Polynesian and not European… and since chickens have a bit of problem when it comes to sailing across the open Pacific on their own, they must have arrived on the ships of Polynesian sailors.
The chicken bones dated to sometime between 1320-1410 AD, which fits with the time when Polynesians probably would have been expected to reach the American continent, although until now, there was no evidence that they actually did so. It is likely that they traveled here from Easter Island, and made their way across the ocean to Chile.
The Mapuche people living in Chile today, coincidently, have quite a number of Polynesian words in their language, and some of their tools are very similar to Polynesian items. While this may be a direct link between these people and the ancient sailor, there is not enough evidence to be %100 certain.
At the very least, there can be no doubt that Polynesian chickens – and humans – discovered America well before Christopher Columbus ever knew of its existence.
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Tomorrow: Sailing Obelisks
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